Warrior's Dread
by Infernal-Soul
Summary: The UAC facility on Mars is in need of a new security force. Little do they know it's arrived far too late.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The End**  
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The paranoia here was beginning to become suffocating. I could hear things... large clawed monsters... crawling and slithering around the darkened corridor. The blackness was so great, my light amplification gear was doing nothing in an attempt to give me sight. Only four clips remain of my ammunition, including the clip I already have inserted into my assault rifle. I heard something leave the steel plated wall in time to bombard it with the remaining twelve bullets of this clip. Quickly I ejected the clip, listening to it clatter across the blood stained floor, as I grabbed a new one and slammed it in place. I heard more claws press off from the steel to strike. I firmly squoze the trigger against the grip on the rifle, sending a hail of all fifty bullet into the swarm of fiends as the muzzle flash faintly showed me where they were. Several clicks emmanated from the rifle's action, it was trying to fire nonexistant round into the hoarde. Quickly I ejected the empty cartridge as my hand scrambled across my belt for another.

This series of small attacks only seemed to anger the horde of monsters, feeding them with more power instead of weakening them. I heard more claws scratch the metal surfaces as more beasts pounced at me. I slammed the ammunition clip into its chamber and took a step back. My boot lost all traction on the blood of a fallen scientist when I stepped. My back cracked against the steel floor just after I squoze the trigger back once again emptying the clip into the demons. By the muzzle flash I could see several thousand of them filling the corridor until there was a bend, most were arachnid however there were also growing numbers of humanoid beings. The rifle stopped firing and let off more resounding clicks as the action moved to fire bullets that were already fired.

I scrambled to my feet and hit the switch to eject the cartridge, however I didn't feal it leave the rifle nor hear its casing reverbrate off the flooring. Fear took hold in my mind now, and I dropped the now useless weapon and reached to my hip holster for my fifty caliber pistol. Time seemed to have stopped when my hand passed through empty air, I must've dropped the gun back aways. The terror I was fealing now intensified, I turned and quickly ran down the hallway away from the demons. The sound of air being suprheated echoed into my ear as several of the humanoids threw orbs of superheated plasma at me. Several of the white hot orbs shot passed me and ran into the distant wall, however many struck the walls and floor around me as well. I continued to run, I ran for what seemed like an eternity. I began to hear the echoes of my footfalls reverbrating from the nearing wall grow louder. I couldn't stop myself from running so I leapt and spun around so my back slammed into the wall. Th esecond I stopped I could here the scattered foot falls of the demonic swarm approaching me. I look to either side of me at the doors, a blaring blood red light was alite around each door signalling it was locked. I slid down the wall, I was now defeated. I heard the claws growing louder. I knew my death was immenent, I closed my eyes tightly awaiting the final blow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Mars City**  
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My eyes snapped open as the transport vessel's cryo-stasis chambers deactivated their containment systems. This awakening had little unusual effect on me in part for the numerous times I have had been through this process. I heard the drainage seal snap open as the oxygen rich liquid that surrounded me began to drain from the chamber. I wondered if the newer marines in my squad would awaken without incident, they'd never been 'frozen' before. At the instant that the cool liquid had released my head from its cool, somewhat soothing, grasp I exhaled all of it to be drained. A few minutes later the plexi glass door in front of me slid to the side allowing me to step out onto the cold titanium plating. After exitting my chamber I heard the doors of several other chambers hiss as their doors slid to the side allowing their prisoners to step out. 

Private Vasquez and Private first Class DuGalle simultaneously fell from their chambers coughing the remainder of the liquids from their lungs. Corporal Hiate and Corporal Smith stepped calmly from their chambers and stood at attention immediatly until I walked passed them. Shortly after I passed the corporals I heard my Master Sergeant step from her chamber and quickly follow me. I halted briefly allowing her to walk alongside me. After he'd succesfully hacked most of the liquid form his lungs Hiate looked up at the MSgt and scanned her naked figure letting out a low whistle. I glared fiercly down at him and placed my foot firmly into his side. "Sorry Stuko..." Hiate quickly noticed his mistake and corrected himself. "Sorry, sir, I did not mean to stare at the Sarge..." He apologized. "You'd better apologize to her for your lack of self control." I growled before stepping by.

Once I reached the lockers at the back of the large stasis room I wrenched the locker, which had 1LT Kidaj Stukov, open. "Sir... Whay are we being shipped out here to Mars City?" Master Sergeant Helios asked me before gently pulling her locker open. I sighed as I pulled the lower portion of my armour up to my waist. "Mars City requested additional security, we were the 'lucky' bunch who got the call." I replied boredly pulling the chest piece of my armour around me. I stared blankly at the remaining pieces of my armour that hung in the locker. The piece that caught my attention most of all was the helmet. It was sleek and seemed to be visorless, most would think it impossible to see out of. Along the center of the helm where a thin glowing sensor strip was placed '1LT Kidaj Stukov' was painted in white. I pulled the helm over my head followed shortly by the arm pieces of the armour. Each arm had a single silver bar against the sage green shoulder.

After I snapped every seal in place and seperated myself from the outside world I turned to Helios and held my arms out to the side. "What do you think of the new armour they gave us?" I asked as she finished setting the chest plate in place. "Well, it is a lot lighter than the old stuff... more sleek too." She repleid, her eyes seemed to be tracing the acid green sensor strips that ran along several areas of the suit's exterior as well as the polished sage coloring. Shortly after the Master Sergeant and I had completly donned our armoured combat uniforms the rest of my squad entered the small lokcer room, which was almost immediatly follwoed by the departure of Helios and I.

The forward cabin of this transport vessel in particular was far more luxurious than anything me or the other rangers were sued to seeing, the six hundred sixty-sixth rangers and I were each seated in black leather chairs, MSgt Helios was seated aside me. "This is your pilot speaking, fasten your seatbelts we're about to enter the martian atmosphere." A computarized voice said somewhat boredly over the intercom. "You heard the man, fasten your restraints!" I commanded my team through our armour's internalized comm systems. I heard the snaps of several small restraints tighten aroun me, I didn't really care if it'd done the same to the others.

The titanium infrastructure of the tranposrt moaned and rattled when we hit the atmosphere. After merely a minute the rattling had stopped but the starship moaned still under the atmospheric pressure. Within another few minutes I could see the rust red martian landscape begin to shoot by the viewports that'd just opened. We were still travelling at extremly high supersonic veolcities when I began to see large metal structures begin to jut out of the rockface. I was surprised at the ship's rate of decelaeration as we approached a large docking silo. The large doors contianing the Mars City atmosphere from the uninhabitabal martian atmosphere began to open. The tranport lurched downward after the doors were open. This hangar was gigantic several tranports arriving and departing that were similar to this one lined a platform at the side of what had at one time been a canyon.

Before the ship had been grasped by the hangar's stabilizer arms I had assembled my squad at the departure ramp. The doors hissed open allowing me and my men to walk down the ramp that had extended. All of our duffel bags were already assembled at the base of the ramp. As we left the ship I activate dthe internal comm sys again, "I want you all to meet me at Marine command at eighteen hundred hours," I commanded the squad after refering to one of the numerous digiatal clocks around the hangar bay. I was answered by a chorus of 'Yes sir's.

I walked towards a set of large airlock doors that appeared able for a light armour vehicle to fit. The doors opened allowing Helios and I to walk into the small room behind them. The room had a pair of strange devices on the left wall while the right wall was completly made of plexiglass. "Well..." The scientist behind the glass said looking at our shining dark sage green armour. "I'm going to have to aske the two of you to each stand in one of those red squares..." He told us gesturing to the red outlines on the ground. Helios and I nodded and stepped into our respective squares. "Alright don't move now, this'll take a moment." the sceintist added broedly as he flipped a series of switches. The small romo that we stood in darkened as a red beam of light sprouted from the devices behind us. The light moved above our squares and I quickly figured out that the lights were a biological sensors. The lasers retreated back to their origin and deactivated allowing the room to lighten again. I looked at Master Sergeant Helios then at the scitentist who had gestured toward the opposite airlock door. The hydraulics within the airlock door hissed as the radial and barred locks began to unfasten.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The Assingment**  
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When the thick steel doors had pulled completly into the walls I was greated by a loud series of beeps followed by a short 'pleasant' welcome message to the United Aerospace Corporation, the UAC. As I walked out into the first room a sentry drone scurrried to its resting point at a yellow square in the ground. I watched the small machine and looked to Helios before I continued up a small flight of stairs to the front desk. The technician here didn't seem to be paying any attentino until I dropped my duffel bag next to the desk and put an armored hand on his computer's viewscreen.

The young man quickly reached under the desk and set a small PDA on the counter near me, he quickly grabbed another when MSgt Helios stepped up next to me. "This is your personal data assasstant... You can send and recie-..." I cut the technician off. "Kid... I know what a PDA is." I told him bluntly. "Oh..." He sighed. "Marine command's through those doors over there, you can leave your equip here it'll be sent to your barracks." I nodded and gestured for Helios to follow me to Marine Command. "Sir, do these civies think we're all recruits or something?" MSgt Helio asked me through our amour's internal comm system. "The civies do what they're told to do just as we are... But yeah they think we're all recruits." I replied somewhat coldly as I walked up another small set of stair and through smaller doors. These doors peeled back into teh walls revealing a large cubic room, there was another marine, a corporal standing in the center.

The corporal was unarmoured, likely a new soldier, and was staring off into another room that branched off from this one. "Great things will happen here... Just you wait." I heard a strange, somewhat sadisitc voice snap fro the other room. Almost immediatly after the voice faded the unidentified marine had walked straight on through the next set of doors across the room. I didn't say anything of what I had just heard, but I did walk across the room to where the other marine had left from, he was likely going to marine command as well. 

Asmyself and MSgt Helios walked through the next bulkhead door a marine wearing lighter armour than ours rushed by followinf a sentry drone. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as the prviate nearly tripped over his own gear. This next room was somwhate empty aside form a group of vending machines so we walked on through to the next set of doors. Another marine, again lightly armouredompared to my group, looked Msgt and me over before saying anything to either of us. "Marine command' down that hall..." He said gesturing to his rleft, our right. As I walked towards the elevated platform the younger 1Sgt had gestured to another sentry drone scurried out of a marine command followed by the unknown corporal we'd seen earlier. As the corporal passed I heard him muttered something about busywork and the drone's speed, which I ignored.

As Helios adn I walked into the command room several screens were flashing various maps and displays. The two largest viewscreens had a large map of the Mars City compound with sevral hundred moving blips across it, the red ones were quite obviously the marines. "Ah... Lieutenant Stukov... I see you made it here wihtou too much difficulty." Major Enixan said quietly over his shoulder. I didn't respond to that statement. "We have a new specimen coming in from Delta Labs..." The major started to explain as the Delta Labs were enlarged on the main viewscreen. "... We need your squad to escor-" The major was cut off as the lights in the room blew out, the computer screens had all exploded as well. The sensors in my armour and Helios' activated the light amplicification of our internal monitors so we could still see as if it were at normal lighting.

After a brief second the room became slightly more illuminated as a pentagram of fire began to etch itself into the ceiling. Several runes began to etch themselves alongside the large pentagram. The marines in here seemed highly confused as a maniacal laughter filled the command room. Many frightening, hellish, etheral beings began to pour through the pentagram, these beings attack all the marines aside from Helios, Enixan, and myself. The Major ran up to one of his fallen marines as their 'dead' cells were reanimated. The major didn't have a chance to react as the marine's teeth crushed through his light armour. I reacted simultaneously with MSgt Helios and drew my high caliber pistol, putting a single bullet into the head of everything in the room including the dieing Major.

Outside of the command room I could hear screams echoing, the sreams also echoed with back-up requests through every radio frequency. I looked over the several indicators within my suit that read the vitals of my squad. Both of my corporals were dead, their vitals were crimson and flatlined. Private First Class DuGalle's blood pressure and heartrate were sky rocketing as his ammo stores quickly depleated. Private Vasquez was unusually calm for the situation, his vitals were stable and his ammunition stores were dropping by three rounds every few seconds.

I looked over at Master Sergeant Heliosand cokced my armoured head toward the bulkhead doors sealing off the command center. She nodded as I walked to the wall and pressed my back to the wall. Helios followed my lead as the heavy doors began to pull pull up into the ceiling and down into the floor with ungodly ammounts of creaking.


End file.
